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Following his subject from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. A marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy, "American Sphinx" is "history at its best" ("Chicago Tribune"). Winner of ...
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Following his subject from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. A marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy, "American Sphinx" is "history at its best" ("Chicago Tribune"). Winner of the National Book Award.
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American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
by Joseph J Ellis

Speaking for the Sphinx

Joseph J Ellis' consideration of Jefferson's character-not strictly a biography- is elegantly written and provides a wealth of context to a reader interested in one of our most complex founding fathers.

courtneyinatlanta

Aug 26, 2010

A bit presumptuous

In continuing with my reading biographies of the founding fathers, I picked up this one about Thomas Jefferson. It's not a straight biography in the sense that it goes through his life chronologically, but rather the author spends a lot of time examining the character of Jefferson. I think he presumed to know a lot more than Jefferson's writings left; in other words, he makes some real leaps in logic that I'm not sure I buy. It's all just a little presumptuous.

Publishers Weekly, 1996-12-02Penetrating Jefferson's placid, elegant facade, this extraordinary biography brings the sage of Monticello down to earth without either condemning or idolizing him. Jefferson saw the American Revolution as the opening shot in a global struggle destined to sweep over the world, and his political outlook, in Ellis's judgment, was more radical than liberal. A Francophile, an obsessive letter-writer, a tongue-tied public speaker, a sentimental soul who placed women on a pedestal and sobbed for weeks after his wife's death, Jefferson saw himself as a yeoman farmer but was actually a heavily indebted, slaveholding Virginia planter. His retreat from his early anti-slavery advocacy to a position of silence and procrastination reflected his conviction that whites and blacks were inherently different and could not live together in harmony, maintains Mount Holyoke historian Ellis, biographer of John Adams (Passionate Sage). Jefferson clung to idyllic visions, embracing, for example, the "Saxon myth," the utterly groundless theory that the earliest migrants from England came to America at their own expense, making a total break with the mother country. His romantic idealism, exemplified by his view of the American West as endlessly renewable, was consonant with future generations' political innocence, their youthful hopes and illusions, making our third president, in Ellis's shrewd psychological portrait, a progenitor of the American Dream. History Book Club selection. (Jan.)

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